As I read the obituaries for Julie Harris in the New York
Times and the Washington Post, I was reminded of the relationship
that the Portrait Gallery enjoyed with her during my last few years as the
museum’s director.

Each year, the National Portrait Gallery tries to provide a
special event for the enjoyment of its docents. In 1993 the National Theatre
presented Lettice and Lovage, the play about a docent in a British
historic house, and I proposed a theater party as that year’s event. It turned
out, however, that most of the docents already had seen the play or had purchased
tickets. I suggested instead that we try to bring the noted actress who played
the docent, Julie Harris, to be the speaker at lunch.

I wrote to Ms. Harris and soon got her reply, saying that
she would enjoy doing this. I went to the theater after a performance, greeted
her, and confirmed that she would come on a Monday when there were no shows. She
did, and was a notable success—speaking, to our surprise, about her interest in
museums and particularly in portraits.

After her talk I asked whether she would consider becoming one
of the Portrait Gallery’s commissioners, as her knowledge of the theater and
movies would be very helpful in our evaluation of potential acquisitions in the
performing arts. She was enthusiastic, but explained that while she was not as
busy as in years past, she still might not be able to attend meetings
regularly. We agreed that she could participate by letter or phone, and I put
her name forward at our next commission meeting, receiving an enthusiastic vote
of approval.

While she never was able to attend a meeting, she was
faithful in responding to our mailings—and offered her views on many subjects
in addition to the performing artists proposed for acquisition.

However, on one occasion she did return to NPG as a commissioner—and
to make a special contribution. We planned a special dinner to honor all the
recipients of the Copley Medal, the Portrait Gallery’s award to significant
donors, and to make a final presentation of the medals to more recent
benefactors. The commissioners were to be special guests. Without telling
anyone except those involved in planning the event, I asked Ms. Harris whether
she would be willing to do a scene from her notable play, The Belle of
Amherst, in which she evokes the life of Emily Dickinson, as a special—and
unannounced—treat for those in attendance. She agreed.

In person, Julie Harris was unassuming, and she went
unrecognized that night. To most of the guests she was just a nicely dressed,
gracious lady, enjoying the evening as they were. Dinner was served, the new
Copley medalists received their awards, and the previous recipients were duly
applauded. At that point, I asked the guests to welcome our distinguished commissioner
for a special presentation. Julie Harris came to the platform and instantly
transformed herself into Emily Dickinson, giving a perfect rendition of one of
the spellbinding scenes from the play. A moment of stunned silence was followed
by an ovation. This was an astonishing close to one of the more notable donor
events ever held during my tenure at the National Portrait Gallery. I was proud
to have enlisted Ms. Harris to join us, and honored that she was willing to be
such a terrific supporter of our work.

Her last years have not been untroubled. Not long after my
retirement in 2000, I attended an interview program she did for the Smithsonian
Associates, and realized that she had suffered a stroke. She handled herself
well, though her speech was somewhat halting and she was clearly physically
frail. I went back afterwards, and was delighted to find that her mind was
intact. She remembered me and my wife, Lois, asked after the Portrait Gallery,
and said she was determined to get over this setback. That was my last
encounter with this great lady of the theater—my friend and colleague, for whom
I have such lovely memories and warm thoughts.

August 28, 2013

From P. T. Barnum to Madonna, the
National Portrait Gallery is home to top-notch entertainers of every genre.
This month, we will be featuring the cream of the crop at the National Portrait
Gallery’s collections-inspired trivia game, Pop Quiz. Join us on August 29 at 6:30 p.m. in the Kogod
Courtyard for a night of fun.

This month’s quiz puts your pop-culture history
knowledge to the test with trivia inspired by the singers, dancers, actors, and
stars found in the museum's collection. The team with the highest score
receives a prize.

The
Courtyard Café will be open, and snacks and beverages will be available for
purchase.

Here
is a sneak peek at the ten-point bonus question for this month’s Pop Quiz
trivia:

Left destitute by an alcoholic father and a mentally
ill mother, Charlie Chaplin spent much of his childhood in workhouses and
pauper schools before becoming one of the world’s greatest silent film actors.

Chaplin
found his fame in Hollywood but was born in what European city?

Washington is a city
of spectacles. Every four years imposing Presidential inaugurations attract the
great and the mighty. Kings, prime ministers, heroes, and celebrities of every
description have been feted there for more than 150 years. But in its entire
glittering history, Washington had never seen a spectacle of the size and
grandeur that assembled there on August 28, 1963.

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

If “freedom was contagious” in the summer of 1963, as Martin
Luther King Jr. noted, this particular fever would reach its peak in the
nation’s capital on August 28, 1963. The March on Washington would serve as
further notice that the black population of the United States sought justice. King
said of the event, “We had strength because there were so many of us,
representing so many more.”

It was a political demonstration, certainly, but the day
carried with it much historical resonance. Among the celebrities in attendance
were Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Harry Belafonte, and Marlon Brando. Marian Anderson,
already a symbol of the struggle, led in the singing of “He’s Got the Whole
World in His Hands.” Eleanor Roosevelt had previously invited her to sing at
the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939 after the Daughters of the American
Revolution denied Anderson the opportunity to sing at its Constitution Hall.

The program was filled with speakers who had shaped and
would continue to shape the civil rights movement. Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle
of the Washington diocese gave the invocation. Tributes were paid to many black
women, including Rosa Parks and Myrlie Evers, the recent widow of Medgar Evers.
Twenty-three-year-old John Lewis, son of Alabama sharecroppers—and later elected
to represent the Georgia Fifth District in Congress—made remarks early in the
program, as did National Urban League director Whitney Young and NAACP
secretary Roy Wilkins. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, was the final speaker.

King’s speech was stirring. While everyone else on the dais
spoke only a few minutes, King orated for more than a quarter-hour, bringing
the crowd of 250,000 people together with words that would serve as the prosaic
centerpiece of the movement:

I have a dream that
one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a
dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character. . . . When
we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet,
from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all
of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old
spiritual, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at
last.”

Though the struggle would continue, it would do so in the
eyes of a more informed world. If at previous times the American civil rights
movement had seemed like the work of a dissatisfied few, the united front of
black America—as well as strong visible support within the white
community—prevailed. King noted, “As television beamed the image of this
extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in
man’s capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in
the future of the human race.”

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Image:Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom /
Bob Adelman (born 1930)
/ Gelatin silver print, 1963 / National Portrait
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Tema Stauffer. I was born in Durham, North Carolina, and grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I lived in the Midwest until I moved to New York City in 2005, and I’ve been in the same apartment in Brooklyn for the past seven-and-a-half years.

A: What medium(s) do you work with?

I’m a photographer who, besides taking pictures, also devotes a lot of my energy to writing about art.

Q: Tell us about your technique/creative process.

A: Rooted in a documentary tradition, my work focuses on American spaces and American people, particularly those who are underrepresented because of their social or economic status. Creating my most recent series of photographs involves walking the streets of downtown Paterson, New Jersey, with a medium-format film camera and approaching people to make portraits.

Q: What is your background (education, career, etc.), and how does it contribute to your art?

A: I studied studio art at Oberlin College and then received a MFA in photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1998. Currently, I am an adjunct professor in the photo departments at Ramapo College and the College of Staten Island.

I also write about art for Culturehall (an online resource for contemporary art) and other arts publications. Most of the work I do relates to a dialogue about the history and practice of fine-art photography.

Q: How did you learn about the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition?

A: My friend June Glasson—a wonderful artist who also makes figurative work—noticed the portraits that I posted on my blog of subjects in Paterson. I’ve been sharing news about my work on my blog for years, which has led to a number of important opportunities and relationships in my career. June sent me a link to the competition and suggested that I apply. Naturally, I’m grateful for her thoughtfulness and generosity.

Q: Tell us about the piece you submitted to the competition.

A: Since the competition allows artists to submit a single portrait for consideration, it seems as though this should be a hard decision, but it wasn’t in my case. The portrait I chose of Cathy was the one photograph in my Paterson series that spoke to me the most and perhaps best represents the larger series. In fact, I knew even when I was shooting the portrait of Cathy that this was going to be an important photograph for me.

I was so struck by her expression, the light on her face, and her demeanor as a person when I approached her on the street outside her home on Market Street. She is clearly someone who has experienced some struggles in her life and who is also strong and beautiful in her own way.

Q: Tell us about your larger body of work.

A: Paterson is a documentary series of street portraits depicting residents of Paterson, New Jersey, during the years following the economic crisis in 2008. The portraits focus on the self-expression of working-class and economically marginalized Americans of the diverse racial and ethnic groups comprising Paterson’s population.

Q: If you could work with any artist (past or present) who would it be?

A: Photographers tend to be loners when it comes to making their work, myself included. I do connect with a lot of artists through teaching, writing, and curating both online and physical exhibitions of contemporary photography. A few writers and artists whom I wish I could have known as friends or colleagues or even just as a fly on the wall in the room with are Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, Dorothea Lange, and Diane Arbus.

Q: What inspires you?

A: Listening to stories on National Public Radio. Reading novels, nonfiction books, and articles published in the New Yorker. Watching documentary and narrative films. Traveling. Meeting people. Sharing my life with my friends, my family, and my partner, Tawny.

August 13, 2013

On their initial examination of our portrait of Fred­erick
Douglass, students find it hard to imagine that the polished-looking man in the
painting is a former slave. Indeed, many say that if not for his name grac­ing
the frame, they would guess that he was a lawyer or a businessman dressed in
his best black suit. This unexpected version of a familiar man helps modern
students to imagine how people during Douglass’s time may have responded to
him.

Our students share the surprise of many northern men and women who
encountered Douglass for the first time on the aboli­tionist lecture circuit in
the 1840s. Many, with precon­ceived notions of how a former slave would look
and speak, did not expect to find an elegantly attired man who so eloquently
detailed his time in bondage and his passion for ending the inhumane practice.

Douglass’s response to these prejudices may have been what
ultimately gave us the image that students see in the museum. Although the
artist of the oil painting is not known, the portrait is believed to be based
on the frontispiece found in Douglass’s best-selling autobiog­raphy, Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself, published in 1845,
in part to answer skepti­cism that such an articulate orator could have
actually been a slave himself. Much like many who read Doug­lass’s book in the
1840s and 1850s, students leave with a vision of the man in the image as a
powerful and effective author and activist.

Section 1.
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or
resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2.
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President
shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a
majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

(affecting Article II, section 1 of the Constitution)

*****

The first time a vice president of the United States took
the oath of office upon the death of a president was in 1841. John Tyler became
president after William Henry Harrison decided to give his inaugural address in
the cold and rain without proper attire for the weather. Harrison suffered a
short illness and died one month after becoming president. Tyler was rebuked
during his term and given the pejorative nickname, “his accidency.”

Tyler’s ascendency to the presidency was the first of nine
times in our nation’s history that the vice president was called on to assume
the chief executive duties. Four vice presidents have been elevated to the
presidency because of the natural death of the president—John Tyler (Harrison),
Millard Fillmore (Zachary Taylor), Warren Harding (Woodrow Wilson), and Harry
Truman (Franklin Roosevelt). Four other vice presidents have moved to the
highest office when presidents were assassinated—Andrew Johnson (Abraham Lincoln),
Chester Arthur (James A. Garfield), Theodore Roosevelt (William McKinley), and
Lyndon Johnson (John F. Kennedy). In each of these eight instances, the vice
president had been elected to hold office and became president after the death
of the elected president.

One man, however, became president of the United States
without being elected to either the
presidency or the vice presidency. That
man was Gerald Ford.

Carroll
Kilpatrick of the Washington Post
wrote of August 8, 1974, the day Richard Nixon resigned, “Thursday was a wet,
humid August day, but despite intermittent rain the crowds packed the sidewalks
in front of the White House. It was an orderly crowd, resigned and curious,
watching newsmen come and go and being a part of a dramatic moment in the life
of the nation.”

If there was ever an unprecedented event in the history of the
American presidency, this was it. The zenith of Richard Nixon’s power had
passed less than two years prior to this ugly nadir.As Kilpatrick also noted,
“Largely because of his
breakthroughs in negotiations with China and the Soviet Union, and partly
because of divisions in the Democratic Party, Mr. Nixon won a mammoth election
victory in 1972, only to be brought down by scandals that grew out of an
excessive zeal to make certain he would win re-election.”

In November, 1972, he had won his
second term to the White House by sweeping George McGovern off the electoral
map. After Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in October, 1973 due to a
personal tax scandal, Ford was appointed vice president by President Nixon. At the time, the Nixon administration was also
being investigated for the June 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters
based in the Watergate Hotel. Ford had
barely warmed his chair in the vice presidency when Nixon resigned, overwrought
by the massive Watergate fallout.

On August 9,
1974, Gerald Ford was sworn in as president of the United States; his path to
the Oval Office had been anything but a traditional one. Addressing a joint
session of Congress on August 12, Ford characterized the moment with a bit of
humor, saying, “My administration starts off by seeking unity in diversity. My
office door has always been open and that is how it is going to be at the White
House. Yes, congressmen will be welcomed—if you don’t overdo it.”

Among his
most noteworthy acts as president, on September 8, 1974, Ford pardoned Nixon for
any role in the Watergate crimes, stating, “It is believed that a trial of Richard
Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has
elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been
restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the
prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States.” Ford’s
two and a half years in office were marred by high inflation and unemployment
on the domestic front, while the United States continued to suffer difficulties
in Southeast Asia. He lost the 1976
election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

In 1999,
Gerald Ford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died in 2006.

August 07, 2013

Perhaps more than anyone associated with the National
Portrait Gallery, Marvin Sadik was a transformative figure in the museum’s
history. His vision is responsible for the shape the collections took in the
decade after NPG opened in 1968; also, his influence continues to be felt to
this day. Beverly Cox, retired director of exhibitions, noted, “The sense of
art and style and quality that he brought to the Gallery was exactly what made
it the museum it has become. We would have never been what we are today, had it
not been for Marvin.”

Sadik arrived at the NPG in 1969 upon the retirement of
Charles Nagel, the founding director. Although the doors of the museum had been
open for more than a year, the challenge of increasing the collection remained,
especially as the mission did not include the collecting of photographs. Historian
Margaret Christman records that not all of the early experiences involved easy
decisions, but the museum profited by Sadik’s judgment.

A bronze head of Ezra Pound by
Joan Fitzgerald, priced at $2,000, came up for consideration [early in Sadik’s
tenure]. . . . When the Pound bust was
put on display . . . a Washington lawyer protested to Marvin Sadik, “I do
somewhat resent the fact that Ezra Pound could warrant being included with such
Americans as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, the Kennedys and even Johnson,”
and added, “I just feel that Nazis and
anti-Semites don’t need national recognition, and I think that your inclusion
of him in your Gallery is an affront to those of us who are proud to be
American veterans of World War II and members of the Jewish religion.”

“The magnitude of Ezra Pound’s
merit as a poet so outweighs his obnoxious activities as a Fascist polemicist
that our Commission deemed him worthy of being included in the collection,”
Sadik countered. “The National
Portrait Gallery isn’t exactly a hall of fame but attempts rather to deal with
the whole history of the nation in terms of the people who made major
contributions to it. If you will think about it, there are a few other people
in our collection, even presidents, whose records leave something to be desired
here and there.” He closed with the “hope that you will excuse us a
rogue or two. In a way, it is instructive to be reminded how this great
republic survives in spite of them.” When Pound died on November 1, 1972, the
Fitzgerald bust went on display for two weeks. . . . There was no further
controversy.

The 1970s were heady times for major American museums, with curatorial
barons like Carter Brown of the National Gallery and Thomas Hoving of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art dueling for masterpieces and blockbuster
exhibitions. In the fray of competition between the large institutions, Sadik
coolly guided the National Portrait Gallery into a series of major
acquisitions. Curator Emerita Ellen Miles chronicles the magnitude of those
efforts when the fledgling museum went toe-to-toe with the most powerful
institutions of American visual culture.

Most important among
his acquisitions were Gilbert Stuart’s “Athenaeum” portraits of George and
Martha Washington. He also persuaded Congress to permit the gallery to collect
photographs, which had been specifically denied in its initial charter. Marvin’s
humor, sense of timing, vast knowledge, and visual acuity were legendary. He
persuaded Paul Mellon to donate his large collection of engravings by Charles
Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (1770–1852) by reminding him of the
upcoming date of the artist’s birthday in 1974, which is when the gift arrived
at the gallery!

Although Sadik is remembered for his savvy and his
willingness to mix it up with the big kids, it is a little white tiger cub that
many around the museum remember from this period. Linda Thrift, who worked with
Sadik from 1971 until Sadik retired, recounts, “There was the tiger cub from
the zoo named Marvin in his honor. They brought it to the gallery and we all
got to see it; Marvin became Marvina after the zoo found out he was a she. She was sent to the Cincinnati Zoo—she was an offspring of the
zoo’s white tigers.” Beverly Cox adds, “I will always remember Marvin padding
off down the hall after the tiger in his velvet slippers (which he wore because
of his gout). He enjoyed that moment immensely.”

Sadik was a knowledgeable director and attuned to world arts; prior to
his tenure at the NPG, he was director of the Museum of Art at the University
of Connecticut and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. After he left Washington,
he returned to Maine, where he owned and directed a fine arts gallery. Marvin
Sadik, director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1969 to 1981, died this
past May in Falmouth, Maine.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

By Anne Wallentine,
Intern, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

In
September 1862, Clara Barton (1821–1912) was
one of few women among the Union and Confederate armies waiting for the bloody Battle
of Antietam to begin. She described the experience as “a miserable night. There
was a sense of impending doom. We knew, every one knew, that two great armies
of 80,000 men were lying there face to face, only waiting for dawn to begin the
battle. It gave a terrible sense of oppression.” In this theater of war Barton
had an immense impact, nursing the wounded and transporting supplies to the
front lines.

Barton’s
career was as varied as it was long. Though most famous for her work during the
Civil War, she began as a schoolteacher, successfully implementing reforms in
schools around her hometown of North Oxford, Massachusetts, and in New Jersey.

In the 1850s, Barton took a job as a copyist in the Patent Office, the building
in which she worked is currently home to the National Portrait Gallery. She
would return to the building again during the war, when it functioned as a
hospital for wounded soldiers. Barton’s story is entwined with the history of
the Patent Office Building—first in its use as a federal facility, later as a Civil
War hospital, and today as the art museum that houses her portrait.

While
an employee of the Patent Office, she lobbied successfully for equal pay to her
male coworkers, despite being one of only a few female government employees at
the time. As Washington prepared for war, she decided to put her energy towards
helping the wounded—first by organizing supplies and then, as she learned of
conditions at the front, with her presence. In 1862 her perseverance earned her
official permission to go the front lines.

When
supplies were delayed or suppliers were under orders not to advance for fear
they would be captured by the enemy, Barton was there to assist. As she noted,
“that was the point I always tried to make, to bridge that chasm, and succor
the wounded until the medical aid and supplies should come up.”

Despite her
lack of formal training as a nurse, her efficiency and drive had a huge impact:
she assisted in surgeries, extracted bullets, comforted the dying, and helped establish
field hospitals. As her biographer Stephen Oatesnoted, Barton “loved associating with [the] common soldiers” and
“considered herself one of them.” They, in turn, loved and respected her. She
understood more than most the terrible cost of the war, having experienced it
firsthand. In its aftermath, she turned to helping families find lost soldiers
and relatives.

After
the war, Barton also embarked on an exhausting lecture tour. Her contemporary
biographer Percy Epler wrote that “a tear-stained multitude thronged everywhere
to hear her,” for she made it her mission to show, as she said, not “the
glories of conquering armies but the mischief and misery they strew in their tracks;
and how, while they march on . . . some one must follow closely in their steps,
crouching to the earth . . .faces bathed in tears and hands in blood. This is
the side which history never shows.”

She
went to Europe to recuperate from the lengthy tour, where she first heard of
the newly organized International Red Cross and the Geneva Convention’s rules
for humane treatment in war. Barton was inspired to push for the adoption of
both in the United States. In 1882, her efforts were repaid when Congress
approved the Geneva Convention and joined the International Red Cross—she had
already formed the fledgling American Red Cross in 1881.

Barton was intensely interested in social reform
throughout her life, and her actions during the war gave her a platform to
speak out for equal rights for women and African Americans. In 1892, Barton
wrote and delivered a poem she had written about the women who worked on the
front lines. She addressed the doubts of those who scorned the idea of female
nurses, asking, “Did these women quail at the sight of a gun? / Will some
soldier tell us of one he saw run?” The work that she and many others performed
during the war was an important prelude to the movement for women’s suffrage,
in which Barton took an active role.

Toward
the end of her life, Barton was forced to resign as president of the Red Cross
after complaints about her management style. She died in Glen Echo, Maryland,
which is now a National Historic Site.

Her
contributions had an incredible and lasting impact on the American social
landscape; Barton dedicated her life to the betterment of the human condition
in wartime and peace. Her description of her work at Antietam provides a vivid portrait
of her life and legacy:

We worked
through that long bloody night together, and the next morning the supplies came
up. . . . My strength was all gone. . . . I lay down on [the floor of a wagon], and was jogged back to Washington, eighty
miles. When I reached there, and looked in the mirror, my face was still the
color of gunpowder, a deep blue. Oh yes I went to the front!